


we burn tonight

by thinkbucket



Series: can't let go when you still need saving [2]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: But at first she hated you too, F/F, I live and breathe angst with a happy I will kill everyone ending, The Forehead TouchTM, When she hates everyone but you, thank you tumblr for the gifs that inspired this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:28:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22666267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinkbucket/pseuds/thinkbucket
Summary: “You’re alive,” Yennefer, suddenly feeling a surge of hope, stumbles forward. If anyone can save them, it’s the Rectoress. She knows it.Until she collapses.
Relationships: Tissaia de Vries/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: can't let go when you still need saving [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1673863
Comments: 18
Kudos: 183





	we burn tonight

**Author's Note:**

> This didn't turn out quite the way I thought it was going to. Wish I could polish it but let's be real it'd never get posted

Tired. 

Yennefer is so very tired. 

She aches, her bones are screaming at her in protest, her breath coming out in pants and every attempt to fill her lungs sears through her chest. 

She’s so tired, and everything hurts, but she can’t give up. Not when there’s so much on the line. Not when the Rectoress is out there. 

Is this the end? Is this the way that she will die? Decades old and yet unfulfilled? Unable to even say goodbye to the only person she cares about anymore on this continent before it’s all over?

She laughs bitterly to herself. 

She never expected to have a happy ending anyway. Good endings were so rare in the real world. She could only hope that it would be a sudden and brutal death, swift enough that it doesn’t drag on, but harsh enough that it will commemorate her hatred for eternity. 

She thought she was ready, before. Told herself she’d march gladly into death, because what had life to offer her now? She’d taken all it could give her and even that wasn’t enough. Nothing was ever enough for her. She knew that.

She hears the shouts getting closer. The Nilfgaardians are so close. She probably has minutes.

What more can she even do at this point? She walks towards the noise. Headfirst, it’s all Yennefer has known.

And that’s when she finds her. Hunched over, but alive, still fighting. Tissaia.

“You’re alive,” Yennefer, suddenly feeling a surge of hope, stumbles forward. If anyone can save them, it’s the Rectoress. She knows it.

Until she collapses.

“No! No.” _I need you_ , she is frantic. “The Northern Kingdoms are close. We can’t give up.” _Please._

She’s so weak, Yennefer can tell. Hears it in her breathing, sees it in her eyes, struggling to focus, almost vacant, barely clinging to thought. Feels it in the way she grasps weakly at Yennefer’s arms.

_Yennefer. I can’t. I’m so sorry that I have let you down._

She is overcome with grief at the hopelessness in Tissaia’s thoughts. Let her down? How dare she ever think so. “You saved me,” Yennefer whispers to her. Saved her from a life of feeding pigs, rescued her from a life of sleeping in the stables, took her away from a family that never loved her and gave Yennefer everything she could. “I won’t ever forget that.”

The barest of smiles graces Tissaia’s lips. Finally finding her voice again, she breathes out, “It’s your turn to save these people. This continent. This is your legacy.” She says it with such conviction, Yennefer wishes she could believe it. But—

“I can’t.”

“You can!” And Yennefer is a student again, standing in a classroom, desperately trying to control the chaos that permeates her soul and force it into something useful. Tissaia watching, critiquing, correcting, telling her to keep trying but she just _doesn’t know how._

“Everything you have ever felt, everything you’ve buried,” a hand, gently and shakily brushing her hair back, cupping her cheek, “forget the bottle, let your chaos explode.” A thumb strokes, and Yennefer feels all the soft touches she has ever received from Tissaia, all of the tender moments that she for so long had desperately shoved to the side, because this woman had bought her, she had seen her as a project, a possession. The respect and admiration, the craving of affection Yennefer had felt was always dwarfed by the bitterness, the simmering fury that she would never be seen as anything more than a _piglet._

But here, now, with Tissaia holding on to her and giving Yennefer full access to her mind, she knows differently. This whole time, she’d been speaking but Yennefer was too stubborn to listen. 

_You are so precious to me._

There are no words Yennefer can speak, none she can even think in response. She brings her forehead to Tissaia’s, touching ever so briefly, trying to convey in this small gesture what she feels.

Tissaia smiles. (She knows.)

Yennefer stands, and with her she takes the last of Tissaia’s love and strength, poured out from her unsteady hands.

They have minutes.

She exhales, relishes the burn.

She will make them count.


End file.
